


Menorah Conspiracies and Other Distractions

by borealowl



Series: Four Cups of Wine and related stories [8]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Menorah, Vatican, author has spent too much time on Jwitter, not quite as light as I was intending but still very silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:54:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27036766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borealowl/pseuds/borealowl
Summary: “Wait,” says Crowley. “You’re talking about a giant seven-branched candelabra? About this big?” He spreads his arms to gesture at the rough size.“That’s what the descriptions say, anyway,” says Lori. “Why? Haveyouseen it?”“Don’t be ridiculous,” Crowley says. “I would never set foot in the Vatican.”Crowley loves a good conspiracy theory, and when he learns about the persistent rumor that the Temple menorah is hidden in the Vatican, well, what demon could resist?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Four Cups of Wine and related stories [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1605910
Comments: 74
Kudos: 204





	Menorah Conspiracies and Other Distractions

**Author's Note:**

> Explanatory notes [here](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/354423460). 
> 
> Sometimes you [see a meme](https://www.heyalma.com/does-the-vatican-really-have-a-secret-menorah/) and have to work it into your fanfic series, I guess.

Later, Crowley won’t be able to remember how the topic came up. He’s distracted by Miriam, who has reached the age where climbing on things is starting to seem possible, albeit not always advised. She’s balanced on the arm of the sofa, and he’s slightly worried that she’ll fall off and hit her head. Instead, she shouts “surprise!” and half-jumps, half-falls on him.

“It’s not a surprise if I watch you do it,” he says. “You have to get me when I’m not looking.” She scowls at him thoughtfully, but doesn’t answer, just slides off the couch into the floor.

So he’s only been half-listening to the conversation, and doesn’t know why Lori is suddenly talking about the Vatican.

“What about the Vatican?” Crowley asks. “Did you turn Catholic when I wasn’t looking?”

Lori rolls their eyes. “No, kind of the opposite. I was talking about sneaking in and taking back the menorah in their basement.”

Crowley perks up. Heists are fun. “Why do they have a menorah in their basement, anyway? They don’t celebrate Hanukkah, do they?” He turns to Aziraphale. “Do they?” Having spent much of his time on earth avoiding sanctified spaces, he doesn’t have the clearest idea of what goes on in them.

“They don’t,” says Naomi. “Unless their Jewish friends invite them over. Or they’re part of an interfaith family, maybe. Anyway! Lori’s not talking about a chanukiah.”

“No one would care if the Vatican happened to have a random chanukiah,” Lori agrees. “Well, almost no one. It’s the idea that they have the original menorah from the Second Temple stored away in their basement.”

Aziraphale frowns. “I’ve never seen it there. And the menorah would have been rather noticeable.”

“Wait, you’ve been to the Vatican?” Lori asks.

“And in their basement?” Mirka adds.

“Of course,” says the angel, then stops. He looks to Crowley for help, but Crowley just shrugs, unable to think of a good lie.

“Was that through your research?” asks Naomi, with that odd smile she gets sometimes.

“Yes, precisely,” says Aziraphale with obvious relief. “You know that I’m interested in the writings of early saints and prophets, and they have quite a collection of texts and relics in their archives.”

“But no menorah?” asks Lori.

“I’m afraid not. I would certainly remember if I’d seen something from the Second Temple there.”

“How would you know it was from the Temple?” asks Mirka. “It’s not like they would have labelled it.”

“I _am_ a religious scholar, my dear,” says Aziraphale. “I would certainly recognize a large seven-branched menorah made of gold.”

“Wait,” says Crowley. “You’re talking about a giant seven-branched candelabra? About this big?” He spreads his arms to gesture at the rough size.

“That’s what the descriptions say, anyway,” says Lori. “Why? Have _you_ seen it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Crowley says. “I would never set foot in the Vatican.”

There might have been follow-up questions, but Crowley doesn’t hear them. He’s too busy getting the wind knocked out by 14 kilos of toddler landing on him from the top of the sofa.

“Surprise!” shouts Miriam, again.

“Good job!” he tells her, before her mothers can scold. “That was definitely a surprise.” His tiny human is already learning to hone her mayhem skills. Crowley is very proud.

*****

The hard part is keeping the plan to himself for the rest of the visit. As soon as they return to London, he kisses Aziraphale and leaves for his own flat.

“Have to make some calls,” he explains to the angel.

“You can’t make them from your mobile telephone?” asks Aziraphale. “Crowley, are you up to something?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he replies. “Ciao!” With another kiss, he’s out the door. It’s not that he thinks Aziraphale will be seriously upset when he learns about Crowley’s latest idea. But Crowley wants it to be a surprise.

It takes longer than he expects. First he has to remember precisely where he’d last seen the menorah, then he has to track down contact information for the dealer, who turns out to be long dead. Through some miracle (not one of his), the dealer’s great-granddaughter inherited his entire estate and still has most of his papers. “I keep meaning to go through them, or donate them to the university, but you know how things are,” she explains to Crowley. “I haven’t even gotten around to getting this stuff appraised, even though I could use the money.”

Crowley looks around the attic. “Don’t know about the rest of it, but I know someone who will give you a fair price on those books.”

“Really? Who?”

“My, er, husband, actually. But he will give you a good price. Tell him I said so. But, er, don’t tell him why I was here. Please.”

A look of suspicion crosses her tired face. “Um…”

“No, it’s nothing like that.” (Like what, he’s not sure, but he doubts she’s guessed the truth.) “The object I’m tracking down…I want it to be a surprise.”

Her face clears. “Oh, that’s sweet.”

Aziraphale does indeed give her a good price—Crowley later learns that he overpaid extravagantly. “I had to, Crowley, she’s having such a difficult time, and she’s such a nice young woman.”

*****

Getting the buyer’s name isn’t as helpful as he’d hoped. The man who bought it has died, and unlike the art dealer, his estate was divided among eighteen nieces and nephews. Faced with the daunting prospect of contacting this many humans for what was supposed to be a minor diversion, Crowley gives up for a while. He’d rather spend the time with Aziraphale and his favorite humans. Miriam is three, then four, then five, changing faster than he can keep up with. And she has so many questions! She can think of hows and whys that had never occurred to him.

Sometimes she’ll come up with a question that none of the adults in her life can easily answer. Each has a different approach to dealing with it. Aziraphale will help her look the answer up in a book, Naomi will look up different explanations and ask which one she prefers, and Yael replies with a question of her own—“how do you think we could solve this?” or “What do you think might have caused it?” or something similar. Crowley offers wild guesses, or sometimes true answers disguised as wild guesses, if he remembers something that the human he pretends to be couldn’t possibly know. All three humans seem to find this hilarious.

It is in this spirit that he answers Miriam’s question about the destruction of the Second Temple. Naomi is giving a reasonably accurate (and thus, depressing) rundown of the history, when Crowley interrupts to add “but maybe the menorah ended up in a basement in the Vatican!”

Naomi laughs and rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe that you remember that ridiculous theory.”

“I love a good conspiracy,” he says.

“What’s the Vatican?” asks Miriam.

“I’ll let you take this one,” Naomi tells him.

“Why me? Hang on, let’s go find Zira. _He’s_ the one that’s actually been there.”

Despite his best efforts to derail it, the conversation does end up covering the Arch of Titus, and Miriam is exactly as angry about it as Crowley had expected. He doesn’t know if all six year-old humans are this obsessed with the idea of fairness, but Miriam is.

“So it’s like if Micah drew a picture of the time he made me cry? Why would they do that?”

“We could make Micah cry and then draw a picture of that,” Crowley suggests. “Or a whole monument about it.” Even though Micah and his mother had both apologized for the incident at the beginning of the school year, Crowley hasn’t entirely forgiven him.

“Crowley.” Naomi is smiling, but there’s a hint of sternness there. “He’s _six_. He apologized.”

“He said he was sorry a _lot_ ,” adds Miriam. “He cried, too. I’m not mad now.”

Crowley shifts restlessly from foot to foot. He doesn’t really care about Micah. Mostly he wants to change the subject. He knows that the universe is fundamentally unfair—he knows it as well as anyone can, whether on earth or above or below it. And it’s always irritated him before, when someone (Aziraphale) refuses to see the world for what it is. And yet, here he is, trying to distract a six year-old human so that she can spend a little longer believing in justice. And so, Crowley resorts to bribery.

“Do you want to go to the zoo tomorrow?”

Miriam gives him what can only be called a suspicious look. Crowley stares back, refusing to believe that she sees through his ruse, obvious though it may be. She can’t know what he’s doing. She’s _six_. Her lifetime is a tiny fraction of the span Crowley has been distracting humans—one-thousandth, in fact. There is no way that he is failing to tempt someone who hasn’t even lost all of her milk teeth. Just in case, he raises the stakes.

“We can go to the big zoo, if you want. The one in the Bronx.” That does it. Miriam views the other boroughs as mysterious and exciting far-off lands, full of different parks and better zoos.

“Are there snakes?” she asks.

“There’s an entire reptile house,” says Naomi. “Why don’t you go ask Uncle Zira if he wants to go too?” 

“Okay!” She runs out of the room, and Crowley breathes a sigh of relief. Crisis momentarily averted, thanks to reptilian intervention. But he knows the subject will come up again eventually, and he’ll run out of new boroughs pretty quickly.

Maybe he should resume his search for the menorah. It won’t solve the underlying problem, but at least it would be a really good distraction.

*****

Even after he starts actively searching, it’s still a slow process. It might go faster if he was devoting all his time to the work, but he’s not actually in a hurry, and he’s not used to spending so much time alone anymore. He’d never enjoyed the decades and centuries he’d spent away from Aziraphale, but at least back then there were reasons to avoid each other, and reasons for Crowley to keep his distance. He doesn’t need to worry about that anymore. He can spend as much time as he wants around Aziraphale without needing an excuse—not even doing anything with him, just watching television or picking fights on the internet while the angel reads nearby. Looking up every so often to see him still there, occasionally catching Aziraphale doing the same. It’s a small everyday happiness that has woven its way through Crowley’s life, and he mildly resents that this self-assigned quest keeps taking him away from it.

“Do you need me to give you more space?” Aziraphale asks him one evening in bed. The angel is reading, and Crowley amusing himself by seeing how hard he can make it for Aziraphale to pay attention to his book. He’s twisted himself around Aziraphale, with one arm around the angel’s neck and a leg thrown over his lap. Crowley has never seen the need to stay within the limitations of the human spine, and this is comfortable. 

“What about this scenario would give you the idea that I wanted space?” he asks. As if to illustrate his point, he buries his face in the angel’s hair.

Aziraphale sets his book aside. “You’ve been spending a lot of time away,” he says. “I don’t know whether you’re upset about something, or feeling unwelcome here, or simply needing more time to yourself.”

“You could have asked,” Crowley says.

“I _am_ asking.”

“You could have asked before you complained about it to Naomi and she told you to use your words.”

It’s only a guess, but Aziraphale’s rueful smile confirms it.

“I suppose I could have. But I am asking now. _Are_ you upset?”

“Nope. Just busy.”

“Busy with what? You’re retired.”

He grins. “Call it an independent project.”

“Is this going to be like the time you shut down Heathrow?”

“ _Which_ time I shut down Heathrow?”

Aziraphale sighs and picks his book back up. Crowley waits for more, but the angel just keeps reading.

“You’re not going to try and find out what I’m doing?”

“I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough. Possibly when I next attempt international travel.”

“But you aren’t worried it’s something bad?”

“No. Inconvenient, yes. Infuriating, perhaps. But not bad. I trust you.”

“Ah, erk,” Crowley clears his throat of the strangled noises and finally manages to say, “really?”

“Of course. Even setting aside my personal fondness for you, you know that I’ve always thought that you were actually a nice per—mmph.” The sentence is cut off by Crowley’s kiss. When he draws back, the angel blinks a few times. “Was that meant as discouragement? Because if so, it was singularly ineffective.”

“How about as distraction?”

“Oh, in _that_ case…” The book is set down again, and not picked up for some time.

*****

Crowley is rather prone to distraction himself, so the project still stalls out from time to time, and it takes another year of phone calls and research to locate the artifact. When he finally does identify the most recent buyer, he gives a shout of laughter. He recognizes the name. Better yet, he’s pretty sure Aziraphale will, too.

“Him?” The angel wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Yes, of course he was on our list, but…ugh.”

“That bad?”

“Like Gabriel, but with less charm and no taste. Why do you ask?”

“He’s part of my project.”

“Do I want to know why your project involves the head of an American corporation?”

Crowley smiles. “I don’t know angel, _do_ you?”

“Mm. I’ll admit I’m curious, but…perhaps it’s best if I stay out of it for now. I hope you weren’t expecting me to contact him for you.”

“Nope. I don’t know him as well as you do, but we’ve had our interactions. He was on our list, too.”

Aziraphale looks startled. “Really?” Then he shrugs. “Well, I suppose that’s humans for you.”

Crowley waits until he gets back to his flat to make the call. He knows he’ll have to tell Aziraphale about the project soon, but he wants to draw the mystery out as long as possible.

“Steve! This is Crowley… Sure you do, we met at that fundraiser in Tulsa… Yes, with the sunglasses… Yes, and the… Yes… Hah, I knew you’d remember… No, that’s not important… Well, not to me anyway…I’m sure it is, but I don’t actually care.”

He gives the man a couple minutes to sputter his questions.

“Look, the reason I’m calling is, huh, how to put this? Do you remember the joke you made? At the party? The one about a deal with the devil?”

Crowley can feel his face stretching into a sharp-toothed smile, one he doesn’t have much call to make these days. “I have good news and bad news for you…”

After that it’s just a matter of working out the details.

*****

He doesn’t tell Aziraphale why they’re in DC, or why they’re being let in the back entrance of the museum, or escorted into the storage rooms by the museum’s director and a baffled docent. This doesn’t stop Aziraphale from asking, with increasing irritation in his voice, but it also doesn’t stop his angel from accompanying him. And the questions abruptly stop when the docent unlocks a large storage crate.

“Crowley, is that…?”

“You tell me, angel. You’ve seen it more than I have. That’s why I brought you here.”

Actually, he brought Aziraphale here to see the wide-eyed look of surprise and delight on his face. Even if no other part of his plan works out, it will be worth the effort just to see that.

“I never thought I would see this again. It’s been sixteen hundred years, you know.”

“So it’s the real one?”

“Yes, of course. You can’t feel it? It’s a holy object.”

“I’d better not touch it, then. Not without gloves.”

The docent glares at them. “ _No_ one should be touching it without gloves. It’s not even going to be on display until the conservators do their work.”

“ _That’s_ not going to be an issue,” says Crowley. He smiles cheerily at the scowling museum director and confused young woman. “It’s coming with us.”

He’s expecting the docent to explode, but instead she sags with resignation.

“Another federal raid,” she murmurs to herself, too low for human hearing. “I have _got_ to get a new job.”

*****

It’s fortunate that he spends so much time at Aziraphale’s these days, because the menorah takes up an inordinate amount of space in Crowley’s flat. He can barely get around it to water the plants.

This is the problem with Crowley’s plans. He’s good at creating them, and the execution is usually successful, one way or another, but he has trouble sometimes with the follow-through. Just as it never occurred to him that making the very shape of the M25 form the sigil _odegra_ in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu might have consequences other than fuming motorists and a commendation, he has likewise failed to consider what he would do with the menorah once he found it. It’s tempting to simply arrive Naomi and Yael’s flat bearing the artifact, possibly with a festive bow tied around it, but that will lead to awkward conversations like “How did you find this?” “What manner of beings are you?” and “How did you get this up the front stairs?”

He knows that eventually he’ll think of the perfect moment to surprise them with the menorah. In the meantime, he needs a safe place to put it. Somewhere out of way, where no one is likely to look.

And just like that, the next step of the plan comes together.

*****

“No,” says Aziraphale. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh, come on. You offered to help!”

“That was when I thought you were returning it to the rightful owners.”

“What, you want me to sashay into Yael and Naomi’s apartment saying ‘Hey, we found your menorah. Don’t ask us how, I promise it was through completely normal human means’?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Come _on_. Admit it, it’s going to be hilarious.”

“I admit no such thing! There must be a hundred places that you could take it. The Israel Museum. Rabbi Lord Sacks. Almost any synagogue in the world. Or anywhere that _isn’t_ a basement in the Vatican.”

Crowley shakes his head. “If we take it to any of those places, they’ll want to authenticate it.”

“That’s a trivial problem. We’ve both forged paperwork before. And you have extensive experience with the relic trade.” Aziraphale shakes his head in disapproval as Crowley grins at the memory. He’d spent a couple years selling fake relics back in the 900s, to the angel’s lasting annoyance. He wonders whether any of them ended up in the Vatican.

“Sure, we can provide paperwork, and carbon dating, and whatever. But will anyone _believe_ it? These are humans we’re talking about. If you just give them the thing they want, they question it. Even with the best paperwork, even though it really is the actual item, they will still find ways to doubt. But if it turns up at the Vatican, they’ll say ‘I knew it all along!’”

He watches Aziraphale consider this.

“You know I’m right. Look, all I ask is that you get it down there. I’ll make sure it gets found.” He’s not sure how yet, but that part of the plan can be worked out later.

The angel sighs. “You’re not going to let this go, are you? I suppose it will be nice to visit Rome again, if nothing else.”

*****

He watches Aziraphale enter the city, pulling the crate on a flatbed trolley, garnering surprisingly little attention. Crowley wishes he could go with him, but even standing nearby is uncomfortable, like he’s on the verge of getting a mild sunburn. These people do _not_ like demons.

Crowley isn’t good at waiting, but he is good at finding ways to keep himself occupied. He spends some time giving incorrect directions to tourists, sending them off following extremely convoluted directions that he promises will lead to their destinations, faster and safer than any route in their so-called guidebooks. They leave so confused that even if when do consult the books, it doesn’t do much good. Somehow this leads to Crowley being hired to give an impromptu tour of the neighborhood to a group of tourists who refuse to believe that he isn’t looking for work. He’s planning on making all the history up, but he remembers a lot of gossip from his many visits across the city, and most of it is too fun not to recount. If Alessandro Lupo didn’t want his family’s dirty laundry aired five hundred years later, he shouldn’t have confided everything to his buddy Antonio. (Crowley had just been trying to have a quiet drink and didn’t actually need to know whose mistress was poisoning whom, but when humans are in a sharing mood, there’s very little that discourages them.) 

Then some _actual_ local tour guides pull him aside for a quiet chat about moving in on their territory, and why they don’t recommend doing so, and what might happen to those who try anyway. That provides another half-hour’s entertainment.

They’ll be fine. Eventually.

Where is Aziraphale, anyway? How long can it take one angel to run a simple errand? He must have run into some delay. Or just gotten distracted. It’s almost certainly something innocuous. Probably having tea with the pope or something. Crowley isn’t _worried_ , exactly, he just doesn’t like that Aziraphale is somewhere Crowley can’t get to. And that Heaven can.

He tries sauntering vaguely in the direction of the Vatican, just ambling, not really trying to go in or anything. He starts to blister almost immediately, and draws back, cursing. They _really_ don’t like demons here. If Aziraphale would just get a mobile phone like a normal…being…they wouldn’t have this problem.

He retreats to a cafe across the street. There aren’t any customers, and the owner is taking advantage of the momentary quiet to berate the waitress for some minor failing. Annoyed, Crowley starts to walk back out without ordering anything, then gets an idea. He works a quick miracle and stations himself at a table outside the bakery next door to watch the results. Sometimes a demon has to make his own distractions.

The waitress walks past him, wiping her eyes and trying to look cheerful. Crowley suggests that she take the day off.

“I was already going to,” she says. “The asshole just fired me.”

“Good,” he says. “You didn’t want to work there anyway.”

Somehow this convinces her that Crowley cares about her problems, and to his mild irritation she sits down at the table and starts regaling him with a convoluted tale of woe that he isn’t paying much attention to. As she talks, Crowley watches over her shoulder. The first few customers are tourists, and they leave looking satisfied. Crowley hears one man telling his wife in a loud American voice that this is what _real_ Italian coffee tastes like. He smirks. The former waitress takes this as encouragement to show him a photo on her phone. “ _Look_ at this! He’s wearing _her_ scarf! How could I be so blind?!” It’s a very distinctive scarf, and that’s when Crowley realizes that he saw the man less than an hour ago.

“Your boyfriend’s a tour guide?” he asks.

“ _Ex_ -boyfriend.” She resumes her story, and Crowley continues not to follow it. Some locals have entered the cafe, and he’s looking forward to the results. Even over the street noise, he can hear an argument starting.

“Hey,” the woman says. “I think that man is waving at you.” Crowley follows her gaze and sees Aziraphale. He’s out of his chair and across the street in an instant, cafe drama and waitress forgotten.

“What _took_ you so long?” he asks, arms tight around the angel.

“Well, I couldn’t just walk right into the basement and leave the crate there. I had to find a good place for it, and that required moving some other items to a different area, and then someone asked me what I thought I was doing, and I didn’t want to lie to a man of God, but I also couldn’t exactly tell him the truth, could I? It was quite a mess.” Aziraphale takes his arm and they walk down the street toward their hotel.

“So no tea with the pope?”

“Not this time, he had other engagements. I did have a chance to catch up with an old acquaintance in the archives, though. And I encountered a few old professional contacts—I couldn’t inform them of my retirement, of course, not without giving rise to some awkward questions, but—my goodness, what is going on back there?”

There’s a small crowd outside the cafe. They seem angry.

“Oh, that.” Crowley shrugs. “Turned all the coffee to Starbucks.”

*****

The subsequent months remind Crowley why he never preferred setting elaborate traps for people. You have to make them walk in, and that’s always more difficult than it seems. It’s one thing to put something right there in front of them, with a big tempting “forbidden” label. He still suspects that they would have gone for the apple even without his intervention. If the tree had been in a basement halfway around the world, humanity would probably still be in the Garden.

Fortunately, he has six thousand years of demonic subtlety to draw upon.

“Have you ever been to the Vatican?” he asks Naomi. She rolls her eyes.

“I can’t believe you’re still obsessed with that conspiracy theory.”

“I’m not _obsessed_ ,” he says in protest. “Just wondering. We were in Rome last spring, you know, Zira and I. Hadn’t been in a while.”

“Did you have fun?”

He grins. “Yes.” She raises an eyebrow, but he doesn’t elaborate.

“I see. Well, I haven’t been to the Vatican, but I’ve been to Rome a bunch of times for conferences. And Yael and I did the tourist thing once, when I was still in grad school. She took a month off from her job and we went to a bunch of places in France and Italy. Mostly crashing with friends and old classmates, because we were broke. She enjoyed it more than I did—I kept noticing all the history and getting upset about it.” She shakes her head. “I was kind of a pain to travel with, I think. I refused to go into Notre Dame with her because I was mad about the Synagoga statue near the entrance.”

“Which one is that?” He’s never paid particularly close attention to cathedral art. He was there for a lot of the events depicted, and doesn’t see the need to dwell on it.

“I’m surprised you didn’t notice her—it’s the woman with the snake around her eyes. It’s not that bad compared to some of the other art—there’s no blood libel, at least. But it was kind of the last straw for me during that trip. There’s just so much of it, and I can’t compartmentalize the way Yael can. Like with the stupid menorah joke. It’s funny, but, just—argh. I’m grateful that we’ve been able to hold on to so much of our history, but…so much has been taken from us. And then they build monuments celebrating it, and decorate their buildings, and put up these statues. And then these things get to be architectural treasures, while our historic synagogues and cemeteries decay because no one’s left to use them.”

Crowley stares at her through his glasses. He’s not sure he’s ever heard Naomi sound this bitter. She can be serious, or sad, or angry, but this is new.

“Did something happen?” That sounds stupid. “Recently, I mean.” Not much better. “To you?” He wishes Aziraphale were here—not that the angel is much better at comforting humans, but at least then there would be two of them inarticulately trying to figure out what’s gone wrong.

Naomi sighs. “I’m sorry, I’m just having a bad day.”

“Can I help?” He’s perfectly willing to throw curses or miracles at whatever the problem is.

“No, it’s just…I had a fight with Yael this morning. Not over anything important, just because something stirred up some bad childhood memories, and I wanted to help, but instead I said the wrong thing, and ugh. We talked it out, but I still feel bad. _And_ my dad’s feuding with the new rabbi over politics. Not even a major political difference, but Dad’s upset about it, and now he wants to change temples, but Mom doesn’t want to, and for some reason they think Yael and I should mediate.”

“Between them, or with the rabbi?”

“Either, both, I don’t even know. He’s normally great, you know that, but he gets like this sometimes. His parents were even worse—my zayde could hold a grudge forever and half the time you’d never even know why. He’d just cut people off. This is why Dad doesn’t have anyone local to speak Yiddish with anymore—it’s all old men and they’re _all_ like this, and none of them are on speaking terms with each other.”

“No wonder he likes me,” says Crowley. She smiles.

“The Yiddish isn’t the only reason he likes you, but it is why you’re his favorite child.”

“I’m _what?_ ”

“Oh yeah, didn’t I tell you? He decided you were an honorary Lipsky a while ago.” She turns to look at him, suddenly concerned. “Is that okay? I know families are a complicated issue for you and Zira…”

Demonic senses tell him that Naomi wants to ask more. Nine years of friendship tell him that she won’t. It’s funny, wanting a human to resist temptation. Knowing a human well enough to trust that she will. It’s also a funny situation. At ninety, Harry Lipsky is old for a human. But Crowley is ageless.

“Nah, it’s fine. Just didn’t realize I’d missed the announcement.”

She laughs. “No, he just started referring to you as one of his kids. Stuff like ‘Two of my daughters live nearby, but one’s in Atlanta, one’s in Seattle, and my son lives in England.” Which could have been you or Zira. But then there was the time we were chatting with one of his friends and he said, ‘You think _she_ asks questions, wait ’til you meet her brother.’ That obviously meant you.”

Crowley fidgets. It’s absurd on the face of it, given their respective ages, but he still feels an annoying prickle of warmth.

“Is this going to involve paperwork?” he asks, and is gratified by Naomi’s laugh.

“Hah, no, no one expects you to change your name or anything. Especially since both Ella and I passed the family name to our kids. Not because he’s attached to the name for itself, he just says that since they tried to erase it from the world we might as well keep it going.” Her smile fades and she sags back against the sofa. “He’s a good dad, most of the time. And my grandparents, well, they tried their best. I always knew they loved me. I had a good childhood, and I know how rare that is. I _know_ I’m lucky. But even so. There’s all this _history_ to deal with. From the personal scale all the way up, and I have no idea what to do about it. I just… sometimes I can feel all the weight of the past pressing down on me. And right now it’s just too much to deal with. You know?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

They sit together on the sofa in the silence of their memories. Crowley considers telling her about the menorah to cheer her up, or at least change the mood. But it would still raise too many questions, and now doesn’t seem like the time. Try as he might, he can’t seem to come up with a good distraction. For lack of anything better to do, he reaches out and gingerly pats Naomi’s shoulder.

“There there?” It’s more a question than a reassurance. He’s not good at reassurance. But Naomi smiles again.

“Sorry to dump everything on you. I’m fine overall, I promise.” She rubs her head. “Though I think I’m coming down with a migraine, which isn’t helping. No wonder I’m in a weird mood.”

“Mom, Uncle Crowley, come here!” Miriam’s voice drifts in from the next room.

Crowley stands up and offers Naomi a hand. As he pulls her up, he banishes the migraine—he can’t do much about the past, but he can at least help with the headache.

On the dining room table they find a cake with candles. Several slices have already been cut out, but Crowley can still read “Happy Birthday” written across the top. Next to the table there’s an angel who is immaculately clean, and an eight year-old who is not.

“Surprise!” says Miriam, a light cloud of cocoa and icing sugar coming off her as she bounces.

“She insisted that we make a birthday cake,” Aziraphale explains. “With candles. But she already blew out the candles.”

“It’s not _my_ birthday,” says Naomi. Crowley and Aziraphale try to avoid meeting her eyes, hoping to avoid the obvious follow-up question. It’s hard to have a birthday when your existence predates the creation of linear time. Naomi just smiles and says “It’s not mine or yours, and it’s not Yael’s, and I don’t think it’s Zira or Crowley’s. So whose is it?”

“No one,” says Miriam, handing her a plate and fork. “That’s what makes it a good surprise.”

“Good logic there,” Crowley says. He’s proud that she’s learning to throw people off-balance, though he could wish for a little less sweetness and a little more mayhem.

“I’m certainly surprised,” Naomi tells her. She takes a bite. “Yum! Good job, sweetie.”

Miriam hands Crowley a piece of the chocolate cake. “Try it!”

He’s not a fan of dessert, not the way Aziraphale and the humans are. Maybe snake tongues just taste things differently, or maybe it’s just a general demonic impatience with sweetness. But he can’t disappoint Miriam, who is looking oddly intent.

A second later, he understands why. He grimaces, and Miriam giggles.

“You like spicy things, right? So we put hot sauce on your piece.”

Crowley once again has occasion to regret that his sunglasses block the force of his glare. “I never said I like spicy cake.”

Aziraphale tries to look apologetic, while Miriam grins. “Surprise!” she says again.

He grins back at them. She’s been paying attention after all.

*****

He’s surprised when Naomi calls him. Normally she texts, or emails, or just waits for them to come over for Shabbat dinner. Now that he and Aziraphale don’t have to pretend to be human anymore, they can visit whenever they want, which averages out to once or twice a week.

“Crowley.” Naomi sounds tense, and he starts to worry.

“Is everything all right? Did something happen?”

“Just get over here. Both of you.”

Within five minutes, they’re in the Lipskys’ living room. Seeing all three humans there and apparently intact, Crowley’s worry ebbs somewhat, but he’s not sure why Naomi and Yael are refusing to meet his gaze. He catches Miriam’s eye, and she shrugs, as baffled as he is.

“So,” says Naomi. “Yael and I just got a very, um, emotional phone call from Jeff. You two remember Jeff?”

Aziraphale’s “Yes” comes at the same time as Crowley’s “No.” She snorts.

“Figures. Well, as Zira may recall and Crowley apparently doesn’t, Jeff is a colleague and former student of mine.”

Aziraphale smiles. “Of course, he works on medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Wonderful young man. I helped him…” the angel’s eyes widen. “Oh dear, I think I know what this is about.”

“Oh really?” says Crowley, putting as much sarcasm into his tone as he can manage. “I’m so glad someone does. I don’t suppose you’re in the mood to share this information?”

“I’m going to step away for a moment,” says Yael. “Don’t wait for me.”

Naomi looks back and forth between the two of them. “I was wondering if you were involved in this, and apparently you were.”

“What was he involved with?” asks Crowley. “Still waiting for an answer here.”

Naomi glares at him, but there’s no real force behind it. “I know _you_ were involved in this.”

“Involved in _what?!”_

“Zira, feel like telling him what you helped Jeff with?”

“Please?” adds Miriam. “I want to know too.”

“Well,” says Aziraphale, looking slightly guilty. “He was having some difficulty getting access to certain research materials—manuscripts, as I understand it—and since I’ve kept in touch with several of the archivists, I didn’t think there would be any harm in asking them to grant him access.” He looks away from Crowley. “And, well, I thought that it’s been several years already, and I didn’t feel right just leaving it there, and perhaps this was the sort of opportunity you might be waiting for. So I asked Vittorio if he might give Jeffrey a tour of the artifacts in the basement.”

“So,” says Naomi again. “I don’t even need to ask how it got there, I can just assume the answer is ‘Crowley.’”

“Actually,” Aziraphale interjects, “Crowley can’t set foot anywhere on the grounds without injury and probably discorporation. That’s why I had to be involved.” He sighs.

Demons have very good hearing. “Just because you’re covering your mouth in the kitchen doesn’t mean I can’t hear you laughing,” he calls to Yael.

“Sorry!” she calls back.

Naomi starts to smile. “Okay, that answers my second and third questions. Which one of you made the crate ‘coincidentally’ fall open just as Jeff was walking past it?”

“Me again, I’m afraid,” says Aziraphale.

She nods decisively. “All right. You’re off the hook. For now. But _you_ ,” she turns to Crowley, “have some questions to answer.”

He makes a show of recoiling from her glare. Sometimes it’s best to indulge Naomi when she’s feeling dramatic, and there’s a worrying hint of real outrage running under her humor.

“Yes?”

“First of all, _why_?”

He shrugs. “I thought it would be funny.”

There’s a pause. “Okay, yes, fair,” says Naomi. “I guess what I mean is, what kind of prank is this? Have you known where the menorah was this entire time? All those centuries it’s been missing?”

“No! I didn’t even know what the menorah _was_ until you told me. I just remembered seeing it a couple centuries ago, when you did. And I decided to find it for you.”

“Okay, but then why didn’t you tell us before now?”

“How should I have told you? ‘Naomi, Yael, look, I found your missing candelabra!’ Should I have given it as a Hanukkah present?”

“It’s the wrong amount of branches for that,” says Miriam.

“Right. And I _did_ try to hint that you should go to the Vatican.”

Naomi presses a hand to her forehead and sighs. “Okay, I understand why you didn’t bring it up for most of the last fourteen years. But what about these past few months? You could have mentioned it when you pulled the wine prank.”

Crowley shifts, suddenly embarrassed. “I didn’t want to spoil the surprise?”

She narrows her eyes. “Crowley.”

Crowley fidgets under her glare for a second before giving in and telling the truth. “I forgot.”

“You what?”

“I forgot! A lot of things have happened in the last few years. And it was hidden away in a basement. And after Lori moved away, no one’s been making menorah jokes.”

“So you forgot.”

“Yeah.” He turns toward the other room. “I can still hear you laughing! There’s no point in hiding.”

Yael walks somewhat unsteadily into the room, wiping her eyes. Naomi starts laughing too, all trace of anger gone.

“Poor Jeff called us at 3 AM. Yael had to convince him that he wasn’t about to become a prophet.”

“Was he disappointed?” asks Miriam.

“Relieved. He just wants to finish his book and get tenure.”

“I’m sorry to have cost you a night’s sleep,” says Aziraphale.

Naomi shakes her head. “Nah, it’s fine.You’re both forgiven. You found something we thought was gone forever. It might be a tiny drop in an ocean of loss, but that makes it all the more precious, to have it back.”

“Ooh,” says Miriam. “That’s very poetic.”

Naomi grins at her. “Thank you.”

“I’ll admit that I’m a little worried,” Yael says. “A lot of people are going to be angry about this, for every conceivable reason.”

“Hmm, you’re right,” says Naomi. “If this starts a war, I’m rescinding my forgiveness.”

Crowley gulps. “I’m sure it will turn out okay,” he says. He hopes.

*****

Somehow, it does. It’s not exactly calm—there’s what Aziraphale calls “quite a bit of fuss,” the news hosts call “heightened international tensions in the wake of the so-called ‘menorah incident,’” and Jeffrey’s department chair calls “an amazing achievement, but not one that we can include in your tenure file.” There are practical logistics, diplomatic exchanges, and a lot of religious compromises to be worked out. There’s even a diehard group of conspiracy theorists who, to Crowley’s delight, insist that the menorah is a fake, and the real one is still in the Vatican somewhere.

And yet, somehow, it does all turn out okay. Crowley and Aziraphale aren’t privy to whatever backchannel negotiations are necessary, so neither of them knows exactly how or why things resolved the way they have. But each has his theory.

Aziraphale insists that it must be part of the ineffable plan. He’s not entirely sure how, but he points out that if the world was going to be destroyed, it would have happened sixteen years prior, so they shouldn’t be surprised when other potential catastrophes are averted.

Crowley has a different explanation. Humans are clever, creative, and capable of so much. But they’re also easily distracted.

Aziraphale points out that some humans are remarkably focused. It’s true, they are.

But that’s the real miracle of humans. You think you have them figured out, and somehow they manage to surprise you.

**Author's Note:**

> Shana tovah, and happy Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah, everyone! I am worn out from holidaying. It doesn't help that my temple was like "[Owl], you're a millennial, you know what a Youtube is, right?" and promptly drafted me to help with holiday programming. But my holidays, while not what one might hope for, were pretty great. I hope yours were as well!
> 
> I am also finally caught up on replying to comments, I think. Thank you so so much to everyone who has left a comment. I'm sorry that I get overwhelmed and sometimes it takes me two months to reply. Please do know that they make me extremely happy. 
> 
> @Periphyton, I should have your history prompt up soon, since it's already 2/3 written. If we weren't on Pandemic Time, that would mean a week or two, but who knows right now. Like taking down the sukkah, I'll try to have it done before Hanukkah.


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